Werewolf Wedding (2 page)

“Oh come on,” I said, grabbing the estimate sheet she was holding in a hand that shook. Jeanette isn’t a shaker. “How much could it possibly... holy
shit
that’s a lot of zeroes.”

I stared at the note and shortly, my hands joined hers in a little group trembling session.

“What’s it for?” I asked, consciously forcing my hand to stop shaking. I might drink a pretty good amount – I
am
an artist after all – but nowhere near enough to get the shakes. Still, it was a
lot
of zeroes. “Did he say?”

Jeanette shook her head, still staring at the note with the zeroes on it. “Said he’d come by later. He didn’t want to commit to anything before he saw you. That’s how he put it, too,” her voice was distant and dreamy and holy
hell
that was a lot of zeroes. “Didn’t say anything about your work. Just said he wanted to see you first.”

Flitting dreams of scruffy-hot calendar hunks danced through my head. “Did he sound hot?” I asked, and then had to laugh at myself to pretend I wasn’t serious.

“Yeah,” she answered in a monotone. “Real growly. Back of the throat kind of, uh, Steve Perry growl.”

“The guy from Journey?” I searched my karaoke memory banks. That might go along with the drinking a little too much. “Isn’t that more of a wail?”

She nodded, still with that blank expression on her face. “Call it whatever you want, it’s hot as hell. Anyway, the guy said he’d come by later. Didn’t want to... wait, I already said that, didn’t I?”

I patted her on the back and gave her neck a little squeeze. “It’ll be okay,” I said. “Somehow, we’ll pull through a growly-voiced man who is apparently very rich who wants to pay me a shit-ton of money for an unknown project.”

I remembered that she said there were a bunch of calls, but not any orders. “What else was there? You said there were a bunch?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jeanette said, shaking out the cobwebs. “It’s just that is so many zeroes it was hard to focus. It was just some random junk. You have a dentist appointment on Thursday, and they said if you didn’t show up for this one, they’d have to start charging you for no-shows. Your therapist said the same thing, but your appointment with her is Friday at four.”

She seemed to drift off again. “God it was so growly. I felt his voice in my ladyparts.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Which, er, ones? I’ve got a few parts that are lady-only.”

“In my crotch, Dilly,” she said. “His voice made my crotch tingle.”

“I... see,” I said. “I can’t say I was expecting that sort of honesty.”

“When have I been anything but blunt?”

“Fair enough.”

I nodded slowly, unable to un-arch my eyebrow. Jeanette, with her slightly too-big horn rimmed glasses, and tightly pulled-back bun, just sat and smiled, longingly. She opened her mouth, and I expected something else about crotch tingles, but instead she relayed that the electric bill was three days past due, I had a meeting with a regular client who wanted another statue of her dog, and something about how she was starting to get hungry. And then she mentioned tingling again, which I chose to ignore, not because it bothered me, but because I needed to focus on the important parts.

Not
that
sort of part.

“Did he say when?” I sailed right past her tingling bits, the dentist, my therapist Dr. Brundall, the dog statue and the electric bill, which I made a mental note to pay before I had to fork over ten extra bucks for a late fee. “The growly guy, I mean.”

“No,” she said. “Just later. You know how billionaires are. They don’t like schedules. They live at their own pace, or some other macho alpha thing. At least, that’s what I learned from romance novels. Also they are apparently all into spanking and tying women up.”

I thought for a moment. “That doesn’t sound all that bad, huh?”

“Nope,” she answered. “Wait, which part? The not having schedules, or the being tied up and spanked?”

I took another second to think, because honestly it all sounded pretty good. “You know,” I said, “I’d take pretty much anything I could get at this point. That sounded kinda desperate, didn’t it?”

She shrugged. “When in Rome.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Narrowing her eyes, Jeanette took on a very grim, very serious look. “Dilly,” she announced, with way too much gravity for what she’d said, “I have no idea.”

*

I
n the back of my mind, I knew I should’ve waited to talk to Mrs. Brubecker about her dog statue, but I figured making the eighth Scottish terrier statue for her was a fairly safe bet. Each time she got a new dog, she commissioned a half-sized statue of them, and each time she got a dog it was a Scotty.

Except,
of course
, the one time I decided to try and get ahead of life for once.

She showed up with Rufus, a very dopey, but very sweet, creature that seemed to be about half German shepherd and half, I dunno, wiener dog or something. He was tall, fairly cylindrical in shape, and unfortunately for me, nothing at all like a Scotty. One of his ears perked, while the other flopped. His tail was curly, but sort of cocked off in one direction, and he didn’t seem able to close his mouth all the way.

Still, he was lovable as all hell, I have to give him that. And it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t a Scotty.

The front door clanged open just as Mrs. Brubecker and I were finishing our meeting in my studio, and I heard Jeanette talking to someone who, in retrospect,
did
have a very growly voice. I was neck-deep in sketching though, so I didn’t pay any attention to Captain Sexy Voice for quite a while. Everything I did, when I finally got around to doing it, was highly regimented. I met with a client, took some sketches, took some measurements, sketched some more, and did a lot of frowning before I finished.

Usually when I finished something, I’d look at it and frown some more. It’s always a thing I’ve done – I’m way, way, way too self-critical. Everything I do, I think is complete garbage. I learned about halfway through my twenties that no one else seemed to think that, and when I hit the big three-oh, I realized how much time I was wasting with the self-doubt. That didn’t stop me from feeling it though, like a slow, driving, punch in the gut. You know when you watch boxing, and one guy gets a knockout, so they show the punch in super slow motion? The waves that go through the, er, punchee? Ripples that you’d never see if you weren’t watching in super slow-motion?

Yeah, that’s more or less what it’s like when I finish a sculpture and have to look at it before whoever wanted it picks it up. That’s why I tend not to keep a showcase around, if I can help it. But, staring at the Scotty, I knew we’d be good friends for a while. It isn’t every day that someone wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, “holy shit! I need a statue of a Scotty!”

Except, of course, when that’s exactly what happens.

“I’ll give you ten grand for that thing,” a voice from behind me, said. When I didn’t answer immediately, he upped the ante. “Twenty?”

“Huh? Why?” I turned around, stunned and slightly slack-jawed. It wasn’t my most dignified moment, but what the hell? Someone had just offered me twenty-thousand dollars for a foot-and-a-half high statue of a dog. And I’ll be damned if his voice wasn’t every bit as growly as advertised.

Taller than me by at least six inches – check.

Shaggy, dark hair – check.

My heart still beating – check.

It was embarrassingly hard to deal with myself just then. The flush from my stadium fantasy was back, except this time, I was
staring
at my fantasy. And he was offering me twenty grand for a statue of a damn dog.

“Why?” I croaked. “It’s just a dog.”

He took a step closer, and reached out. I’m pretty sure he was trying to shake my hand, but it turned into more of a “grab her before she hits the deck” sort of handshake. Meaning, not much of a handshake at all. He took my hand and my knees went weak from the heat coming out of his palm.

From the second our skin touched, I knew this wasn’t any regular guy. I’ve met plenty of hot men before, dated a few of them, but this was
different
somehow. I’m not talking about a “oh and I knew right then he was Mister Right” sort of thing – that’s a load of shit. I’m saying that no
person
has skin as warm and comforting as his.

With smoothness rivaled only by things in movies from a time when people wore fedoras and didn’t look ridiculous, he held my hand with both of his and let my wobbles even out. He just smiled at me, his mouth quirked up on the left side, a dimple in his cheek prominently on display. His eyes were the color of storm clouds just before rain – dark, silvery hazel – and nothing I could do was going to let me tear my gaze from his.

“What are you, a Dracula or something?” I scoffed, trying to make myself relax with a joke.

“No,” he said with another smile. “Also, wasn’t there just one Dracula?”

Witty, at least a little bit – check.

My heart still mostly beating – check. I think.

“Were you serious?” I croaked again, my throat felt like I’d swapped bodies with a bullfrog.

“About not being Dracula? Yeah,” he said, squeezing my hand a little tighter. That’s when I noticed that one of his hands was on my wrist, and that his grip was making me feel something akin to what Jeanette told me earlier, with the tingling. “I’m absolutely sure I’m not Dracula.”

I stared at him, drinking in the dark stubble, his fierce eyes and carelessly perfect hair. “Nice suit,” I said, although I think only about half of the words were actually audible. “It’s, uh, soft.”

I realized that I had grabbed his lapel, and pulled my hand away quickly. Then I smoothed the lapel back down where I’d apparently pinched it. The heat from his chest – his muscular, hard chest – was even more thrilling than that from his hand.

How can anyone be this hot? Like physically this warm of a temperature?

“Do you feel okay?” I asked. “You’re kinda hot.”

“Warm natured,” he said in a growly whisper. “Runs in the family. Twenty-five thousand? For the dog?”

I was nodding. “I woulda taken five hundred bucks.”

“Call the rest a tip. I’ll be back next week.” His thumb brushed my wrist, leaving a hot trail that seemed to stretch all the way to my ladyparts which, indeed, tingled. “You’re brilliant. You’ll do my statue and I’ll pay you plenty. Who do I make the check out to for the dog?”

“Dill—Delilah Coltrane,” I said, not quite believing what I was saying. “And are you sure?”

He whipped out one of those longer-than-normal checkbooks that usually only businesses use, and filled it out quickly.

“About which part?” he asked, capping the pen. A second later, he took my arm again, circled his thumb against my wrist and I thought I was going to explode. Wouldn’t that be a sight? “The dog? Or the statue?”

“Both,” I said.

“Well, I just wrote a check for the dog. And as far as the other bit, yeah, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”

The finality with which he spoke; the gravity, the intensity, it was all just so... perfect?

He lifted my hand to his lips, pressed them to the back of it. His eyes never left mine. It felt like they were boring into my soul, and making parts of me surge and tingle that had not done either of those things in quite some time.

“Ne-next week?” I asked, more to move my mouth and keep myself from either drooling or jumping on him and humping tis poor guy’s leg like a Chihuahua in heat.

He kissed my hand again and slid his fingers in a dance along my inner arm, finally inserting the check between my fingers in the instant before he dropped my hand, which fell limply to my side. “Next week,” he said again, never once freeing me from that burning, wonderful gaze. “Wednesday afternoon. I’m not much for mornings.”

I curled my fingers, for some reason expecting to feel the heat from his skin one last time, but all I got was a fistful of my cotton blend skirt. He turned back from the doorway, smiled once more, and then closed the door behind him. Jeanette was standing in the studio. In all the, uh, whatever it was that just happened, I hadn’t even noticed her.

“Growly, huh?” she said, watching him out the window.

His perfectly firm butt moving just the right way underneath his beautifully tailored slacks made me think about
my
definitely less-than-perfect butt. It didn’t seem to matter how many flights of stadium stairs I ran, it never got the way I wanted it. I didn’t have time to worry about that though, too much to do. Too many dog statues to finish.

“He bought the Scotty,” I said in a hollow, confused sort of voice that turned upward at the end.

Jeanette sucked in so much air when I handed her the check that she could possibly have inhaled said Scotty statue, if it were still here, anyway. “Twenty... twenty-five thousand dollars?”

I nodded. “He must’ve liked it,” I said. “Wait, twenty five? He said he’d give me twenty.”

“I like
him
,” Jeanette responded. “I like
you
Jake Somerset. That’s his name, it’s on the check.”

“God,” I whispered. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. I like you too, Jake Somerset.”

His name on my lips tasted manly, musky, and before I knew it another of those tingling sensations shot through me.

As I sat there, still watching him through the window, Jake Somerset ran a hand through his hair in a completely non-pretentious way, and climbed on the back of a long, black motorcycle. It wasn’t a Harley – Jake Somerset wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to make a lot of noise. He just
was
the noise. He didn’t have to try to be in charge, he just
was
.

“I got a dog to do,” I said as he sped off. I reached over to the table where the Scotty had been, and picked up my coffee. Black, one sugar, tepid. The way I always seemed to drink it.

“I think that’s illegal,” Jeanette offered, helpfully.

Snorting, the tingling in my ladyparts became a much different kind of sensation – the burning of coffee in the nasal cavity. “Thanks,” I said, sniffing and coughing. “I’ll remember that.”